The Matriarch
by Nerumi H
Summary: No one knows better than Dell and Meiko that supporting such a huge family requires more than a little manpower, patience, and a lot of listening. She's just better at putting it into practice than him. Light Dell/Meiko, T because Voyakiloids I guess.


.title.: **The Matriarch**

.summary.: **No one knows better than Dell and Meiko that supporting such a huge family requires more than a little manpower, patience, and a lot of listening. She's just better at putting it into practice than him.**

.characters.: **Meiko, Honne Dell, assorted mentions of Voyakiloids.**

.warnings.: **Language, and maybe some sexual jokes?**

.a/n.:** How come these two work so well? ? ? My gosh. This was going to be a lot heavier and more emotional than it ended up, only because when I started writing Meiko, things just flowed so easily into sass and jokes and I didn't want to lose that with moping. So we only have a little of it, yay!**

**I think (know?) this is my best attempt at actually shipping Dell. I loosened up his attitude a bit and made him more agreeable. I really have to learn to do that more often... He's still a difficult character, but ah I try.**

**Here's the key to the unpopular Voyakiloids mentioned:**

**Akumane Zezu = Kasane Teto.**

**Kuroneko Ayame = Nekomura Iroha.**

**Mona Kizu =Meiko.**

**Naikou Ana = Megurine Luka.**

**One thing I like about Voyakiloids...their names aren't just one or two letters different than the character they were based off of. Okay, well, excluding a few. They still beat genderbends.**

**X**

Her cell phone was the first noise Meiko heard after snapping off the shower head, and it jolted her in such a rush out of the tub that she nearly tripped on her way to retrieve it. She got called a lot, by all different people, and it was always important. And who would she be if she let it just ring on its own? There was a reason she brought it in the bathroom with her.

Struggling to wrap a towel around herself and at the same time rifling through her previously discarded clothing on the floor, Meiko heard footsteps gather around the bathroom door. It was the usual routine- -they only had so many lavatories in the Vocaloid household, and the statistics that determined how civil everyone would be about their reserved times was quickly crumbling as more and more Vocaloids joined the household.

Meiko knew she'd had to rush out pretty soon or otherwise endure the wrath of the diva, but thankfully she found her cell in her sweater pocket. For a moment she was concerned it would be Lily passive-aggressively trying to get her out of the shower already, but the voice that returned to her from other end was nothing like Lily's sultry tones.

"Meiko."

"That's me," she answered, loosening a bit of towel from its wrap and using it to rub the water off her arms. "What's up, Dell?"

"...How are you?"

Meiko snickered at her Voyakiloid friend, knowing full well that he hadn't called to ask her such a thing. But she decided to humor him, since he was making such a strange effort to be polite. "I'm not bad. Steaming hot and naked and I think someone's about to kick in the door, but I've been better."

Dell paused for a moment—at first she had the slightest assumption that it was about her visual reply, but then she heard a muffled racket growing in the background. Someone was whining in torrid tones. Finally he answered hurriedly, "That's nice. I've been better too."

"What's the problem today?"

"You mean this afternoon. This isn't the 'day's trouble'. There's been mid-day trouble and siesta trouble and fucking tea time trouble and I don't even want to think about bedtime trouble because Ayame's making fits about how sleep cuts into her troll trapping plans again. Shit, if she wants to catch a troll that bad, Deruko's always slumming around. It shouldn't be that hard."

Meiko had to laugh again at that—she'd heard many an amusing story from him about Iroha's Voyakiloid and her wild imagination. Well, maybe not all that wild, since Aoki and Merli were android-fairies after all so fantastical creatures weren't that far off from the truth. She slipped on some quick clothing just as a hand knocked impatiently on the door.

"Give me a second!"

"My hair is getting as greasy as Gakupo's! Let me in! There better be hot water!"

Meiko quickly gathered up her towel and robe, whisking out of the bathroom before Miku could shrilly talk her ear off. After all, Dell was kind of getting a head start on that.

Miku was jumping around by the door in her bright blue sheep-printed PJ's, and had been in such a rush to snag the relinquished shower that she hadn't even taken off her sleeping mask. It read 'Princess' and she gave an expression just like one while snootily saying, "You were on the phone? Are you kidding?"

Dell was still babbling about his dysfunctional family ("Speaking of Deruko; the next time that skank takes my car—") when Meiko finally found solace in the silence of her room. She grabbed a comb, fell into her makeup desk chair, and beamed comfortingly even though he couldn't see it.

"Peaches, take a nice long breath," she cheerfully instructed. "Really feel it penetrating your poor little smoker lungs."

It was very, very slight, but with the insulated walls of Meiko's dead-quiet room, she could tell Dell was doing as she instructed but trying to hide it.

"I don't need your feng-shui garbage."

And, she was right. "Dell, that isn't even a word. Anyway, what's biting your butt? Keep it short so we can actually get to the advice part." Her friend was often pretty horrid at keeping things 'short', almost as bad at it as Gumi was—which was really saying something.

Dell didn't answer right away, and Meiko detected the argument in the background growing heavier and louder. She raked back her hair idly, concentrating on Dell's end of the call, knowing something bad was up; it wasn't exactly new news to hear the Voyakiloids arguing or moaning, but it was new for Dell to actually be listening in to it.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Dell still did not reply, instead concentrating on the argument, Meiko supposed. However, she was proved right when her deep-breath tutorial went to the wrong use and he took a deep lungful of air, using it to shout at the bloody top of his lungs for them to cool it.

"_You're_ the one who needs cooling," Meiko snorted. Dell was a master of the almighty terrifying voice of authority, but she wasn't scared of his roar at all. Especially since she knew that he did that kind of thing only when he had no other argument to back himself up. "Dell, since obviously you're not going to fix things—"

"Do I have to lock you two in separate rooms again? You're not fucking infants, stop acting like it before I decide to treat you like one and smother you and make it look like an accident!"

Meiko ploughed on, chuckling, "yourself, why don't you come over to Mama Meiko's and we'll chat about it?"

That got Dell to release a fitful sigh she felt he needed to release. The tell-tale voice of Deruko imitating her brother faded off as Dell left the room. When he answered, she could tell his teeth were grit. "As civilized as all your get-togethers are, explaining the non existence of trolls could be hard if I'm drunk, remember?"

"Ah, yes, Delly and his infamous inebriated loss of sense. But that's not what I mean, pumpkin. Don't you just want to see _me_?"

"Not _really_," Dell replied hoarsely, "but I don't think it's exactly optimal for me to be here right now."

"And you want my help."

"...And I want your help."

"Good boy," she chirped while putting down her comb and not bothering on checking over her outfit, her reflection grinning wildly at her. She always had to smile when Dell shoved away the ego for her; it was just so sweet and pathetic of him. "See you soon. Bring your compromising cap."

Dell just grunted as a reply, and right after the dial tone rang in Meiko's ear. She put away the phone; she was about to blow-dry her hair when a thick pinging noise came from her doorway.

She knew that noise, it wasn't made by a fist but instead by an instrument of sorts. She swept to the door and wasn't surprised to see Yuki poised there, clutching the suspected metal triangle in her hands.

"Meiko," she said and Meiko could immediately detect the approaching whine, "Gacha stole my teddy and now he and Gumi are mutating it."

She smiled to herself. The main reason she and Dell were friends and had decided to try and get along in the first place, was because they shared such insane families, and loved them enough to try and help them to the best of their abilities.

Dell was just really bad at it.

**X**

Dell's arrival was announced with the resounding call of Miku from the entryway: "DELL'S HERE! EVERYONE BE CULTURALLY SENSITIVE!" Meiko quickly snagged him before anyone else could act as awkwardly around her friend, and swept him into her perfectly quiet room just as Rin started to call Len in to observe what he'd turn into if he continued with his all-night video-gaming.

Meiko gave him an apologetic shrug, quickly whisking that away with a fall back onto her bed and gesturing for him to join her. Dell took her bureau chair instead.

"So what started the fireworks this morning, my Lovely Little Headache?" she asked conversationally, crossing one long leg over the other's knee. That was apparently the right question, for it set him off on a melodramatic eye roll that she bet he'd done over the phone too but she just hadn't seen it.

"Fuck, I don't even know. I can't keep up with all this shit anymore," he groaned, grimacing impressively. "One day it's because Ana called some guy at the bus stop a nigger, and the next Zezu's swearing she was in the first world war in a past life; I don't know."

Meiko was, may she gloat, rather intuitive, and she knew that wasn't the only issues—silly trivial things that sprang up elaborate racket. With them, the Voyakiloids, things ran a lot deeper. If the Vocaloids had people being grouchy and unfriendly and upset, then they had that too, just knocked up a few (dozen) notches.

She sympathetically nodded anyways, tilting back lightly on her bed and lacing her fingers around her knee. She waited a few minutes, but Dell had whittled off into a silence of endlessly scratching the back of his neck. Obviously in thought, but since she knew it would take a little more to get out of him when the problems weren't a simple 'I'm so fucking pissed off', she decided to steer the conversation to a more amiable and less therapeutic subject. "Well, now that I know you're _all _bonkers, what's new with you?"

"I just told you."

She emitted a light chuckle. "No, _you,_ Strawberry. And you only told me vaguely, by the way."

He raised an eyebrow at her over eyes whose colour mirrored the nickname. She thought to herself how all Voyakiloids had those features—red irises, silvery hair, albino skin. They looked more like a family than her rag-tag mess of rainbow did, but they mattered just as much to her. At least they didn't have the problem of, "EWW YUKARI'S SHEDDING HER HAIR AGAIN!" She decided then that Len's blonde and blue wouldn't fit him at all, though.

He said, "I'm okay. Am I ever anything but?"

"True. Except when we mix you with rum and a stolen grocery cart." She grinned foolishly.

Chuckling the slightest bit under his breath, Dell said with an attempted firmness, "I thought we decided not to talk about that."

"The walls are soundproof, bunny. I do what I want."

He leaned his elbows further on his knees, and the expression that unintentionally misted over his face was long ago coined as his own—he mixed pensive and infuriated and somehow made that all look like it was directing a war inside himself. Something was bothering him, and she didn't think it was the assorted cutesy nicknames she was pelting him with. Not like he was about to come right out and say it.

So she supplied again, "I'm doing good, thanks for asking. Yuki tricked me into punishing Gacha when she was the one who'd started blackmailing him in the first place. I bought a new shirt. I can officially wear high heels again because the blisters are gone. Want me to tell you about them? The shoes, I mean. These ultra-cute black pumps with—"

"Why are we so damn _stupid_." He enunciated this with a stage-worthy rubbing of his temples.

Meiko rocked back a bit, smirking. She knew him too well for him to dodge her. "I ask myself that every day. Elaborate?"

Beginning to speak more with his hands and not looking right at her, Dell continued his epic tale with an increasingly strident tone. "No one makes any effort into anything anymore, and they all treat each other with absolutely no empathy. And I mean nothing. I look like Jesus next to them. I think everyone's just in this enormous competition to see who crushes themselves in an elevator shaft first, and they'll probably laugh about it once it happens, then just start over."

She nodded along, watching him even though he wasn't watching her. Jesus or not, Dell was a truly good guy, she knew—if the fact that he noticed all of this was any indication. Meiko tucked back her auburn hair and smiled at him, saying, "I know as well as you do that it's not always simple."

"How helpful."

"I'm not done! You're a dim boy, I need to put all my thoughts into easy-to-digest words and a bunch of curses." Meiko shot him a grin which he responded to with a crooked frown. She tapped at her chin, lowering her eyelids in final concluding thought, then began to explain in her light smooth tone. She knew he'd listen. "Since you're the empathetic god, apparently, how about you let them know that? I think they just want individual attention, Dell. You even treat them like they're only all one unit sometimes. I only know a few names because you'll refer to them as one whole—well, like I'm doing right now, but you need to let them know they're not all the same people, okay? And then maybe they'll quit trying to implode things. I think they want you to know they're there."

The impact of all these words wasn't apparent on him, as usual, for the only thing he gave her was another sigh and a half-hearted shrug. And she swore they'd have impact—she could probably ramble about nothing useful (which she sometimes did, because she was much better at the practical than the theoretical even though Dell kept mixing them up) and he'd accept it all anyways. She figured he just liked hearing things from her on the subject, because it wasn't like anyone else had experience like they did.

"I know mine—especially Miku and Gumi—hate it when they're ignored—hell, everyone does, no matter how big your family is. They all have individual issues, and I don't think yelling a generalized solution at a room full of people who are fighting for different reasons will really help." Dell's eyes just barely flicked up to hers as she concluded, "My family's a lot bigger than yours, though, so you shouldn't have it too hard."

"Let's not make this into a competition, Meiko." There was a sticky frozen moment as Dell swallowed, huffed, and responded in the most misplaced tone she could ever imagine, "And yours aren't as...troublesome as mine."

"My apologies, Delicacy; that's true, but you're the one living with them. You do get what I'm saying, right?"

Shrug, but she didn't miss the way he watched her for a little longer, a little deeper. "Sure."

"You're welcome." She uncrossed her legs, tilting back her head and shaking away her hair. She mused, "You're a good daddy."

He sneered. "Ugh, don't say it like that."

"Big brother?"

"No."

"God parent? Or are we gonna go back to the Jesus thing?"

And Dell snorted again, but it turned into another laugh, something she was thankful for hearing from him. She leaned forwards, patting his knee, and smirked, "A few timeouts never hurt anyone, too."

He fixed her with a dubious look, and the subtleness of it made an image of Len flicker in her mind again. She doubted he knew how similar he was the prized Vocaloid, but she bet he'd hate her for eternity for relating him to the effeminate boy. It made her wonder a little bit about Mona, the girl based off of her—he didn't mention her much, something that was probably a bad sign.

"Hey, you know what? I should come over one day," she blurted her idea, but once it was out in the open she realised how good it was. "It'll probably be good to integrate some new people, right?"

"If they know who you are—"

"That's why I come in disguise," she teased. "Or something of the like. Besides, I think me being there might get you to chill a little bit."

He leaned back and scoffed.

"So what do you say?"

"If you want."

And sometimes that was the best she could get from him. So Meiko stood up and gripped the shoulder of his shirt, yanking him up out of the chair easily. Pretty much as light as Len, too. Cute.

"And now that we're done with the heavy talking, how about we go for a heavy something else?" she grinned mischievously. Seven at night was never too early for her endlessly good record with the local bar, as long as she was with him.

His brow wrinkled. "I told you, Ayame—"

"Maybe humouring her with troll stories will make her happier," Meiko offered brightly.

Dell rolled his eyes once again, but with that he relinquished—he adjusted the rumpled fabric of his shirt, just managing to let her get a glimpse of a sideways smirk before he followed her out of the room. There was still responsibilities to be done, scrapes to kiss better, arguments to snuff out, hair to braid and reassurances to be given, but...maybe Kaito could take over for the day. Loving your family to pieces was the same as wanting a tiny bit of a break once in a while, after all.


End file.
